In prior art, a user can store a plurality of pictures or photos (both hereinafter referred to as pictures) locally on a personal computer (PC), locally on a mobile device, or on a Cloud Server, these pictures are normally single picture source. A user can upload these pictures to the Internet for sharing. However, content and visual effect of pictures of such single picture source are relatively monotonous, and when a user wishes to share multiple pictures on the Internet, he/she needs to upload the pictures one by one. The content of the uploaded pictures is monotonous and it is inconvenient to operate for users.
In order to better satisfy user's requirements, various picture processing software has been developed currently. Some picture processing software provides a picture combining function, which can combine multiple pictures together to form a combined picture. For example, multiple pictures are combined together to form a combined picture by means of splicing. The combination of multiple pictures can enrich the content and visual effect of pictures. Moreover, it is only required to upload one combined picture so as to achieve the effect of uploading multiple pictures when a user shares the combined picture.
In prior art, the general method for combining pictures by a user is: firstly selecting pictures to be combined, selecting one combination template from a picture combination template library, and after clicking function buttons such as “Enter” or “Save”, the pictures will be directly displayed on the user-selected combination template and directly display the final combination effect to the user. Although such existing picture combining method is convenient and rapid, the presented effect is static and the users' experience is relatively poor.
Some picture processing software, however, provides functions of generating video slides from pictures so as to display pictures dynamically. These functions enable to sequentially play multiple pictures so as to generate slides when a user views spliced combined pictures, the pictures can be traversed to displaying in a user-specified sequence with background music in the video, and at the same time, each of the pictures and the video as a whole can be re-edited.
When performing a function of generating video slides from pictures by means of a picture processing software, a user firstly needs to select a certain number of pictures, and then confirms the playing sequence of the pictures (e.g., the default sequence is a user-selected sequence), then the user can edit the pictures one by one, set the transitional effect between two pictures played sequentially, and add background music to the whole video, finally the picture processing software will utilize a default total duration of the video (or possibly playing time interval of the two neighboring pictures) or time information preset by a user, to sequentially play the user-selected pictures so as to generate video slides with an encoding format such as h.264 and a packaging container such as mp4.
In prior art, in order to satisfy the tailored requirements of users, these software normally provide a video overall preview interface. A user can change the playing sequence of pictures by long-press, dragging and other ways and can manually set the playing and displaying manner for each picture, thereby satisfying the tailored requirements of users. However, in the above step of setting playing effect, it becomes more complicated for a user to set when there are a large number of pictures.